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Full Transcript

0m10s Speaker 0

Hello, and welcome to the two hundred and fifty eighth episode of the Week with Roger, a conversation between analysts about all things telecom, media, and technology by Recon Analytics. I'm Don Kellogg, and with me as always is Roger Antner. How are doing, Roger?

0m23s Speaker 1

I'm good. How are you?

0m25s Speaker 0

Good. So Roger, this week we're continuing the Titans of Prepaid series. Angela Rickers is joining us. Angela is the president of AT and T Prepaid and Cricket Wireless. Angela, welcome to the podcast.

0m37s Speaker 2

Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

0m39s Speaker 1

Yeah. Angela, so excited to have you. We spent quite some time together over the last year. So you're coming up on a year in your role as CEO of Cricket. Why did you decide to join Cricket?

0m53s Speaker 2

Yeah. It's hard to believe it's been a year already. But as you know, the vast majority of my background has been in the telecommunications space. I've been fortunate enough to get to work for most of the major carriers across The United States through acquisition and mergers. And what I love most about telecommunications is the fast paced, it's innovative.

1m13s Speaker 2

And what's probably the best part is, it's all about providing a critical service for customers and getting to see that impact that we have on those customers every single day. And if you also peel back the onion on my experience, you actually find most of it has also been within the prepaid segment. I just have this passion for the fact that we get to support these customers every single day. When you get to see them, they're strivers, right? Like, they're out there hustling every single day to make it work.

1m40s Speaker 2

And that's just so rewarding to actually get to see that what you're doing is helping them get ahead every day. Prior to Cricket, I had the fortunate opportunity to be the president of Boost and Virgin Mobile.

1m52s Speaker 1

Which is where we met first, right?

1m54s Speaker 2

It is where we met. Yes. And I was sitting on the other side of the fence, right? And I got to look at Cricket as one of my biggest competitors. And as we were competing with them, it was always a brand I admired, right?

2m6s Speaker 2

In terms of they had always built the strong brand that appealed to their customer segment. But what was even more important is the loyalty that they were able to drive with their customers. I mean, you could see it in their industry leading churn, they found a kind of a magic sauce. Yep. So when I got the call, and an opportunity came up to work for Cricket, there couldn't have been a better fit.

2m25s Speaker 2

Because it really, again, let me go work for a brand I admired. It allowed me to get back to a customer segment that I'm super passionate about. And it also gave me a chance to take this great foundation that Cricket had and see what we can do to really take the business to the next level. So it's such a great opportunity. And I'm very pleased to get to be sitting in the seat.

2m44s Speaker 1

Yeah, no. And John Dwyer, your predecessor has been on the show, and he's a good friend. And yeah, cricket is an iconic brand in prepaid, and I think prepaid has so much opportunity to grow. But with cricket being twenty five years around, what unique perspective do you bring here to cricket? You know, you had John being in the seat for, I don't know how long, like decade or so, and now you're coming in with a new perspective.

3m16s Speaker 1

How do you see it differently?

3m18s Speaker 2

I think that's ultimately why they hired me is they were looking for a new perspective. I think what I bring to the table is kind of a unique blend of hands on leadership. I'm a believer of at the end of the day, you've got to understand your business, you've got to understand your customer, you've got to understand your team, so that you can figure out how you can bring out the best of all of that to service our customer. I believe in a growth mindset. I think it's super important that we are continuing to find a way to innovate, to drive resilience and to drive collaboration across the organization to push ourselves.

3m49s Speaker 2

And then I'm an engineer by training. And so I believe in a data driven approach. It's all about how do we bring creative problem solving, so that we can find ways to unlock new insights from the data that we've got, and ultimately provide a better customer experience. And so as a leader, you know, what I think I bring to the table is how do we set a clear vision of where we want to go so that we can inspire the team? How do we infuse a culture of curiosity?

4m17s Speaker 2

I believe in like the what if thinking, what if we tried this, what could happen? How do we get those magical unlocks? I also am a believer in like, how do we drive strong accountability within the team? I think when people feel accountable for it, they believe they've got to go deliver and they really step up to the challenge. And then most importantly, I'd say Cricket has a phenomenal culture.

4m38s Speaker 2

And so I'm here to help making sure that we're building on that culture and really leveraging what's core in our DNA. And just like I said at the beginning, how do we bring new thinking to the business so that we can realize our full potential. And so I'm extremely customer centric leader, we've got to bring that to life, because I do believe it always starts with the customer at the beginning of every decision we make.

5m0s Speaker 1

Yeah. And your culture at Cricket is slightly different to that of AT and T. And I think you being in Atlanta rather than in Dallas helps with the slight different way of how you have to look at the thing at prepaid rather than be at headquarters where postpaid dominates everything. Yep. I think that's really smart.

5m23s Speaker 2

Agree, we get to be at the center of the conversation every single day, right? Our entire headquarters team is sitting here in Atlanta. And that magic of being able to walk down the hall and have those conversations just allows us to be so agile and move so quickly. And everyone is just really bought into who we are and the vision that we've got. And it's a great team I've inherited.

5m45s Speaker 1

Yeah. No. And and you just launched new rate plans. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

5m50s Speaker 2

Yeah, we did just launch new rate plans at the July. And really, if you step back and looked at what we were doing from a business perspective, we actually hadn't changed our rate plans in over eight years. And a lot has changed over the last eight years in the wireless industry. And so

6m6s Speaker 1

A little bit, right?

6m7s Speaker 2

Right. So we felt like it was a chance for us to step back and really think about who that customer is that we wanted to attract. And what were we missing in terms of new segments that we think we could appeal to. So we really started off by focusing on unlimited is where the vast majority of customers are interested, they don't want to have to think about how much data that they're using. So we introduced three new unlimited plans.

6m31s Speaker 2

The first one starts at $35 a month. And then we've got a good, better, best strategy, where we add unique features in. We hear a lot from customers when I'm out in the field, that hotspots are really important feature for them. And so you'll see as our plans go up in price, we've added those additional features to help make sure that it serves their needs. So great offers across the board for customers.

6m54s Speaker 2

But we still also know that there's a price sensitive segment out there, and they don't all need unlimited data. So we also introduced a $30 unlimited talk and text with 10 gigs of data. So really just trying to make sure that we've got a little bit of something for everyone. And I'd say the next biggest tweak that we made is we've always done really, really well with the multiline customer. And this was about us opening up and how do we start to attract that one and two line segment that we really haven't addressed before.

7m25s Speaker 1

Yeah, and, you know, we look at the HubSpot very closely. Don and I did a lot of research around it, and what we find is not everybody wants hotspot, but the people who want it, want it intensely. Yeah. The other thing is, cricket has been traditionally very, very strong in the four lines, dollars 25, four lines. And you guys opening up the new battlefront in the one and two lines is very smart.

7m51s Speaker 1

Because when we look at postpaid, the single line postpaid is $60.70 dollars if not more. If I would be single line, I would be prepaid. I'm sorry, that's a tough pill to swallow, right? And the difference between prepaid and postpaid is becoming smaller and smaller, especially when you're on a recurring payment plan. And I feel like the only difference between prepaid and postpaid increasingly is the second bill and handset financing.

8m23s Speaker 0

Well, device financing as well, yeah.

8m24s Speaker 1

Yeah, and the device financing is the other one, right? And so I really applaud you for going after that one and two line battleground where I think the future growth of prepaid is coming from.

8m36s Speaker 2

I agree. And when you look at actually the data, it would tell you that the largest addressable base is sitting in that one and two line space. And so it's really hard to believe like, why would we penalize those customers for not having three or four people on their account? So I think us leaning in, you know, even if you just look at the smart unlimited plan that we just introduced $45 for your first line, 75 for your second line, that's unlimited talk, text and data, 15 gigs of hotspot. It also includes unlimited calling and roaming to Mexico and Canada, right?

9m9s Speaker 2

Like that's a phenomenal value for these customers. And it's really about unlocking this for everybody versus only for the multiline accounts.

9m17s Speaker 1

Yeah. And it's becoming a really interesting phenomenon that the top end prepaid plans are actually richer than the low end postpaid plans. That line is blurring increasingly.

9m31s Speaker 2

I agree. I think there's still this stigma out there in terms of prepaid is really still like the burner phone from ten, fifteen years ago. And we've got this misconception out there that I think is such an opportunity. Because as you compare prepaid to postpaid, the lines are blurring. I mean, we've got the same great service, we've got the same great products.

9m52s Speaker 2

And like you said, and sometimes we're even richer at the high end of our plans. So it's really interesting as we actually get customers to understand the value that we can bring, it really opens up new doors for us.

10m4s Speaker 1

Yeah, no, and when I look at our data, I see that the prepaid postpaid blinders are much more within the carrier buildings than within the consumer. Consumers are much more open to be persuaded to do prepaid if there is value. Because based on other research we've done is, you know, the perception is prepaid is cheaper and postpaid is the better deal. And I think you're starting and the other guys in the industry are starting to erase what was true maybe five years ago, right? And as you blur that line, I think that's the new battlefield.

10m46s Speaker 1

And now you're not only duking it out against other prepaid providers, but you can go raid and attack the low end postpaid. Yep. And especially on one and two lines. It's like, come on, right?

10m58s Speaker 2

Yep, I agree. I mean, at the end of the day, I think the way consumers think about it is, it is a brand choice that they're making. And so they don't think prepaid or postpaid, they think about what are the brands and what are the offers that they have for me as the consumer. And you know, what we find is there's really three things they care about. It's like, I need a great network that's going to be reliable.

11m20s Speaker 2

I need plans that fit my lifestyle as well as my price point. And I need a great deal on a device. And I think the magic comes into now prepaid offers all of those great things. And we can go compete against the whole wireless space.

11m36s Speaker 1

Yeah. No. I agree with you. There are some people who will always wanna have postpaid, but there's so much upside for you. Yep.

11m44s Speaker 1

Yeah. So in closing, you know, now that you're there, what is like one or two things that you want people to know about Cricut that they don't know?

11m54s Speaker 2

Yeah, I think our biggest opportunity is just getting that brand awareness out there. You know, we have a tagline, people that come to Cricut stay with Cricut. And it's so true. We've got industry leading churn, because once customers experience our network experience, our offers, they're really happy with them. But where I've got the opportunity is how do I make sure more people know about our offer, so that they can have that great experience too.

12m18s Speaker 2

And so really, we've just got our work cut out for us in terms of making sure that we're telling our story out there and helping consumers find a way to make it to cricket.

12m27s Speaker 1

Awesome. Well, thank you, Angela, for coming on the show. Really appreciate it.

12m31s Speaker 2

Thank you. As always, it's great to talk to you.

12m34s Speaker 0

Alright. Thanks, Roger. We'll talk next week.